Andrea Sozzi Sabatini, head of equity derivatives and structured products retail sales for Europe, Middle East & Africa at RBS Global Banking and Markets, is understood to have left the bank.

Sabatini (pictured) reported to Beat von Gunten, global head of sales for equities and structured retail at Royal Bank of Scotland in London.

With the disappearance of the regional position, the respective country sales heads will report to von Gunten, according to a London-based source.

Sabatini joined RBS from Deutsche Bank in May 2005, when taking up the position of executive director at ABN Amro, which was later bought by RBS. At Deutsche, Sabatini was head of the Italian derivatives team. Prior to that, Sabatini was a vice-president at Merrill Lynch in London, where he worked in the Italian derivatives team.

Sabatini had been RBS’ main sponsor of its developing exchange-traded funds (ETF) platform, which had been built from a business first put in place at ABN. While at Merrill, Sabatini had been in the team that created the first ETFs in Europe, the Merrill Lynch LDRS.

But even before that, Sabatini recognised the benefits that ETFs could offer investors: “When I was at the Italian exchange, I wanted to launch a segment for ETFs but at the time it was too early – it was 1998,” Sabatini told ETF magazine in October 2011. “I left before the segment was launched.”

ABN launched its first ETF in 2006. Another nine followed in 2007 but after that the development of the business was put on hold until after the takeover. “At that time the bulk of our business at RBS (and it still is the bulk of our business) was with certificates and turbos and generally speaking retail products, not really ETFs,” Sabatini told ETF magazine.

“For a year-and-a-half to two years we concentrated our attention on the existing business to maintain our position in the major markets,” said Sabatini. “ETFs were a good diversification of our business but we couldn’t push it at that time as we would have wanted.”

Mifid Mania

Still Bright

InvestmentEurope's Emerging Markets Supplement 2017 considers the ongoing opportunities facing investors in both equity and fixed income instruments, as well as lessons learned from the global financial crisis and its long-term effect on the asset class.